driftfleet | (no subject)

"The one and only," said Vima. She regarded the boy curiously. She'd grown up with Jedi, who tended to have a certain baseline of self-confidence, and she had never seen anyone who seemed so lacking in it. "No, we haven't, but I think I have seen you once or twice?"

She thought about hopping up and going over to offer a handshake, but decided that might spook him. "You're one of the new crew, right? What's your name?"

The one and only, huh? Between that and Vima's red hair, Shinji couldn't help but be reminded of Asuka. Not the Asuka he knew these days, but the one he used to know, the one with enough confidence to beat a sphinx in a staring contest. The reminder both did and didn't make him feel more comfortable. Hard to explain.

"Probably," he replied. He had a tendency to wander around the ship like a sleepwalker. "I've been assigned here for a little more than a week. My name is Shinji. Shinji Ikari."

Time to say it. Say it. He had to say it. Nothing would happen if he didn't say it.

"I'm the second pilot. So I thought I should introduce myself... sooner, rather than later. Just in case. I mean, you probably don't need me at all, but I thought you should know. If you ever do. Need me."

"It's nice to meet you, Shinji." Vima gave him a friendly smile and refrained drom remarking on how long it had taken to do that. Joking him might just hurt his feelings. "I think most normal, not-kidnapped-into-holoprogram ships do have more than one pilot, so we're a bit better off now."

She put the weights aside. "So have you ever piloted before?"

"Nice to meet you." It was less fragile of an echo, but still just an echo.

Shinji didn't know what to think about the whole kidnapping thing. If Atroma hadn't kidnapped him, he wouldn't have been reunited with Kaworu. That was by no means an unwelcome gift.

"Back home, I was the pilot for a non-traditional vehicle. There's enough overlap that I might be able to figure things out... plus, the augment. I just need the opportunity to practice." For the time being, he hadn't gone anywhere near the pilot's seat. It seemed wrong to do that without making himself known.

"I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time," said Vima. It hadn't taken her long, after all, and her own experience before this had been a poorly-judged adventure in a mining pod. Quite possibly Shinji would just plain be a better pilot than her.

"If you want to get started in it, I'll be happy to let you take the pilot's seat for a while." That was no trouble, and she could just grab a shuttle if she wanted to mess around. "What kind of non-traditional vehicle?"

Wow. That wasn't as hard as Shinji had thought it would be. He stood in silence for a moment, staring uncertainly, as if there were some kind of catch he hadn't heard yet. In his experience, people could get scarily protective of their roles. Himself included.

But Vima didn't add any special terms to the arrangement. Nodding, a bit relieved, he said, "Thank you. As soon as I get a feel for the controls, I should be fine." He was used to things going disastrously wrong, so he wanted to be prepared. The worst-case scenario might depend on him to not be a fuckup. "Oh, uh... Evangelion. Just imagine a giant suit of armor. 70 meters tall, or so."

Vima's eyebrows went way up at that description. Things 70 meters long, maybe, that was a pretty standard starship size. But she hadn't heard of that being a size for any ground-based vehicle. (No AT-AT walkers in her time.)

"And you operated the... Evangelion on a planet's surface?" she said, leaning forward with a look of deep interest. "What do you use it for?" Though she had a feeling the answer was not for peaceful contact with new life and new civilizations.

"Yeah. Eva had aquatic capabilities, too, I think, but I didn't deal with that..." Talking about Evangelion still felt strangely hollow. Shinji preferred feeling nothing over anything else he could feel: anguish, rage, terror, more anguish, even more terror. The absence of pain was a relief for his heart.

Restlessly, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Eva was designed to be a weapon," he said, then, not quite nonchalant about it. "And I'm... I was selected to be a pilot. But like I said, there's got to be enough overlap here."

Aquatic capabilities, too? Vima was filled with curiosity, but she checked herself from asking even more questions about that. Shinji seemed to be somewhat ambivalent about it... especially when he said that the Eva was designed to be a weapon.

He was awfully young to be deliberately sent into a war, wasn't he? How were things done on his homeworld?

"Sounds tough," she said. "Well, the learning curve isn't quite so frantic as it is in a battle... we do get sent into hostile territory every few months. But I'm pretty sure that's staged for the audience."

"Hostile territory..."

Yikes. Shinji didn't feel like he was the least bit prepared to go into battle again.

Eyes narrowing slightly, he asked, "Who are the hostiles? Just more alien species?" He couldn't find the courage to ask if they were expected to hurt--or even kill--anyone they might encounter. That, too, was something he didn't feel like he could do as he had done before. Only protecting Kaworu or Asuka could make him do something like that. Only then. And it would happen with a lot of regret.

Edited 2016-03-01 18:23 (UTC)

"We don't know, honestly. Some of us think it's just droids--programmed to fly around and shoot at us. Then once they've put on a good show, they stop."

Vima frowned. "I don't know of anyone getting seriously hurt so far. But it's not right to put us through that just for ratings."

That was alarming to hear. It did make sense, though: reality TV shows were all about manufactured drama and outrage. Shinji just wouldn't have guessed that Atroma would go that far.

"I have a powerful friend here with me," Shinji said quietly, a hint fondly. "If anything bad happens, he should be able to protect everyone on board the Heron." Even though Shinji knew little and less about Kaworu's Angelic abilities, the other Angels had been spectacularly formidable, so...

"Really?" A powerful friend, huh? That was usually a way of making some kind of threat, but this was decidedly more positive and less vague. "That sounds handy, if one of us can't dodge a laser blast in time--you're saying he could put some kind of shield around the ship?"

If so, it sounded a little like the kind of things her mother could do during space battles.

Shinji nodded cautiously. "Kaworu-kun should have something called an A.T. Field." Again, he couldn't be one hundred percent sure about this, but the other Angels seemed like a reliable reference. "It's a barrier that is impervious to damage, for the most part. He could shield the whole ship, and maybe more than that."

He fidgeted with his fingers, looking down at them.

"I'll... I'll have to ask him about the limitations, if there are any."

Kaworu. That explained a whole lot. "Oh, is that what that is?" Vima said. "No wonder the ship glows like a beacon whenever he visits."

...Which might warrant some explanation on her own end. "That is, I'm a Jedi--I don't know if you've met any of us yet. But we can sense things like that. So I can definitely believe Kaworu could put a shield around the ship."

Shinji wasn't surprised to hear that Vima had noticed Kaworu somehow. At Shinji's request, Kaworu had been hanging out on the Heron almost 24/7. He just didn't want to be without Kaworu for many, many reasons.

"Oh, uhm... I talked to Ahsoka-san. She mentioned the Jedi. She said they were like intergalactic knights."

Blink. Blink blink.

"Wait, you're a Jedi?" he asked incredulously. He had been imagining rugged warriors, all wise and elderly, rather than someone closer to him in age.

"Don't sound so surprised," Vima laughed. "I'm kind of an apprentice, still." It was a little ambiguous, but she certainly wasn't a Master, and she wasn't going to call herself a Knight until she got some experience.

"But that's basically what we are, yes. We use the Force to help people around the Galaxy. You're friends with Ahsoka, too?"

"Yeah, I met her when I was first assigned here," Shinji said, still feeling surprised. And inadequate. And curious. There had been a time when he, too, was tasked with protecting an entire world. It felt like only yesterday, yet it might as well have been forever ago. "She explained hyperdrives to me, and innovations like that. Long-range space travel isn't a thing where I'm from..."

Vima didn't seem like a bad person, so Shinji decided it would be okay to ask more questions. Just a few more.

"What's the Force?"

Vima nodded. It had been just plain weird, at first, to learn that so many people came from pre-space societies, and even moreso that most of them were just from Earth... how could one planet have that much variety? But she'd since learned people like herself were outside the norm. "Seems like it's not a thing for most people--think you're used to it yet?"

As for the Force, well, that was always a tricky one to put into words. "It's an energy field--it comes from life, it surrounds life, it connects life," she said. "All throughout the Galaxy. Some people are born with a strong connection to it. It runs in families."

Shinji, meanwhile, had been disturbed to notice just how many people were not only from Earth, but from Japan. Did the Fleet's audience have a weird fixation on Japanese people? Were they perverts or something? Either way, Shinji was grateful about being rescued from a rapidly decaying world.

"Sometimes it seems like I'm totally out of place... but for the most part, I'm handling it okay. It doesn't feel like I'm dreaming anymore." Rather, it didn't feel like he was hallucinating. The walls weren't closing in and the vents weren't rattling like thunder and he wasn't on the verge of screaming his lungs out. He was actually trying to talk to people of his own volition. Progress.

He listened patiently to Vima's explanation of the Force.

"So everyone's connected to everyone else...?"

"That's good to hear. This place was enough of a shock for me--it must be really tough if you've never been in space, to suddenly be millions of lightyears from everything you're familiar with. And when you do feel out-of-place, just remember you're out of place with everyone else together."

It seemed like it might be a little deeper than that, given how well he'd hidden from the rest of the crew. Still, she was glad that he was seeming a little more comfortable.

"Yes--everything that's alive. I can sense you, the other people on this ship--even some of the Jedi on the other ships, or people with similar powers." She smiled. "It's its own entity, too. Sometimes it gives you visions, or just a warning that you're about to be in danger."

"Yeah, I guess so," Shinji said, which was a bit dismissive. He didn't know how to share his fears with other people. Plus, there was a lot more bothering Shinji than feelings of being a little out of place. He had felt like a pile of crap at home, even before the apocalypse, when he was just another faceless person in the crowd. He never figured out how to deal with his anxiety in a constructive manner.

"But the Force sounds like... well, that's incredible. Being able to see into the future, that's just incredible. It reminds me of... it's like a life force, you're saying? That's a thing where I'm from, too, sort of. Everyone has a soul. A person's soul can exert a special force on other souls, or something..." His guardian had explained metaphysical biology to him once, but he hadn't understood most of it. He smiled sheepishly at Vima. "I'm not explaining it very well."